I don't think the current free trade regime in our neo-liberal global world can possibly be fair or equitable. They're not written that way. As was mentioned earlier, they're designed with certain clauses around most favoured nation, national treatment, and the investor clause. We should be clear, too, that free trade agreements are actually driven by foreign direct investment, not free trade. That's the main motivator of free trade agreements, despite their name. It's foreign direct investment. They're meant to give privileged, locked-in access to Canadian and other companies into the cheap labour and the abundant natural resources of these countries. They exist in a global context of asymmetrical relations between global north and global south.
I don't believe in that context, that free trade agreements can be socially just. I don't believe they can lift people in Honduras or other parts of the global south out of poverty. That's not what they're designed to do. In fact, they were designed primarily with the interests of Canadian companies in mind. That's clearly what they've been designed for, including the right, as was mentioned earlier, to sue local governments. I don't think it's unfair to call it economic colonialism.